Which nbme exams should i do

A 3-digit score that tells you where your aptitude currently lies. Conditions that emulate the actual testing experience. Make no mistake: NBME practice tests do not interfere with studying.

They comprise a necessary stone in your study arch, a structure that would not otherwise stand on its own. Yes, NBME tests do demand a large chunk of time to complete and review. Your study period will be more effective , and you will almost certainly perform better on your real exam by taking some NBMEs.

Taking six NBME tests would be awfully grueling and might have you walking the fine line between well-prepared and burnt out, so tread lightly after your third test. At the absolute beginning of your dedicated study period , take an NBME to find out where you are today.

You will definitely score lower than your goal, but this is just the beginning! Generally, there isn't a benefit to retaking NBME self-assessments. The effort-to-value ratio is pretty low for repeating an NBME test, unless lots of time has elapsed between tests. Strive to take different forms before repeating any.

Take the topic at hand, and put devoted time into elevating your consciousness on the subject matter. For some questions, it will be impossible to arrive at the correct answer because of ambiguity or poor writing, so your main goal should be developing a deeper, more complete understanding of a once frustrating concept.

But of course! Take the NBMEs seriously. Why You Need to Screenshot. Unfortunately, unlike question banks like UWorld, once you complete an NBME, you will no longer have access to the questions you got right, and no explanations will be provided for any questoin. One way to circumvent this issue is to take screen shots save selected area to a file of each question Both Mac and PC computers are able to do this, and the NBME program will not quit like UWorld if you do this just be sure not to distribute the screen shots to others, as this is considered copyright infringement.

The Aftermath. Exam review. If you take screenshots while you take each NBME, any and all questions can be reviewed on your own or with one of our tutors or through often unreliable sources online. Reviewing both your mistakes and the correctly answered questions is of pivotal importance and essentially the crux of why you should take these exams.

You might be tempted to limit the time you take to review the questions, especially after such a long exam. Do not give in to this temptation. Instead take one to two days to meaningfully review all questions and simultaneously memorize the corresponding concepts. The Score. At the end of each exam, you will also get a raw CBSSA score and a raw to three-digit score conversion table.

The conversion table is unique to each exam and can change through the years even for the same exam, as NBME adds more test-takers to its statistical analyses. Hence, beware of old, third-party NBME conversion tables if you elect not to purchasing the exams and obtain them illicitly online for several reasons, I wouldn't recommend this.

Arguably one would think that the three-digit score is one of the most important aspects of the practice exam. In both cases, this is only partly true. On the one hand, scoring below a is indicative of a need to study more. On the other hand, scoring above a is indicative of a good knowledge base.

Here are the reasons to take an NBME practice exam at the beginning:. Is that good? You have no idea. This would indicate an inadequate approach that you should address. Instead, your first NBME establishes a baseline and gauges your studying effectiveness.

A special piece of advice for first-years: consider taking an NBME long before your dedicated study begins. Some students may even take a practice test as early as the summer between first and second year. Note, this may seem like counterintuitive advice.

A practice test so early will be minimally predictive, so why bother? So how does an early NBME fit into all of this? Taking an NBME early will help you start the transition to mastery sooner, which will be better for your Step scores — not to mention your future patients. Generally, more often than not, UWSAs seem to overpredict students scores. Then again they only predicted scores up to More students have seen their scores overestimated than the reverse.

That said, I assume that UWorld adjusts their scaling over time, so the answer may change. My advice: take the UWSA scores with a grain of salt. Instead, you can use them to help simulate an 8-block test, which I recommend. Read This , click here. The short answer: it depends on your exam and timeline. Remember, your goal with NBMEs is to track your progress. You do NOT want to run out of them.

There is nothing worse than taking your test without knowing what you might score. I recommend students take an NBME every weeks. If your timeline is more than 6 months, I will wait months in-between practice exams.

Space out your practice tests accordingly. Since the scores are less accurate, your goal should be to track your progress. Which gives the best score prediction? And which exam best simulates the real exam? The short answer is that there is no clear evidence that one NBME is better than the others.

Let me explain. Each exam has its own scale. This means that questions are worth different amounts of points for various assessments.

The upshot? Sometimes an exam gets a reputation sometimes deserved for being a better predictor. Currently, there is no evidence to suggest one NBME is better than another. Which leads me to my next point: you should take the lowest numbered NBME first. I recommend starting with the lowest-numbered exam first. See more below. However, should you search for the explanations for those questions?

This is a personal decision. Time is a scarce resource, particularly in Boards prep. It might help you to reason through each answer in your Self Assessment. However, your time would likely be better spent by doing more Kaplan and UWorld questions. Life happens, and plans change. If you are in this position, when should you re-start taking your NBMEs? You have likely already used a significant number of practice tests. As for the previous NBMEs you took, they will serve as your new baseline.

You can measure your progress in your further dedicated studying relative to them. That said, there are exceptions:. First, you can use the UWSAs. I only recommend this if you have at least 6 and ideally 12 months since you took the exam last. However, I would take off 20 points as a conservative estimate of the score. In this case, the scores would be between and These take multiple variables e.

In my experience, it is the least accurate method.